the first cordwood house I saw was on Vancouver island using western red cedar double stack wall no issue with humidity

nice. next season "how to eat bread"?

How do pop the knock outs out and feed the wires through after the box is installed???? Terrible example of proper installation. Guessing you've never actually done this in the real world. So many other issues also, oh well.

Some great slides on there to illustrate thermodynamics involved in passive houses and panels! I think this should start with frame mentioning it is unlikely that the thermal system will produce net sum, as opposed to continuous costs. And then I think it should be asked if one was to find that investing in insulation of the building instead of thermal panels would actually get savings. Only after this one might consider solar thermal. Exterior panels where heat is piped through insulated structure would freeze your ash off during northern winters, no no. Opening a window to collect heat from exterior passive solar thermal panel - ok that might be an interesting exercise for a student, but for heating a house up north its a very bad idea. The reasonable approach that comes after experimentation is based on triple glazed windows with specific glazing (as implied in one of the slides). In-building thermal sink behind the window - plus shading and reflectors (aluminum shades). So its an architectural-level problem in this type of scenario, not carpenter-level. I also do wonder if you should explicitly make note of the fact that air convection will never be that effective at transporting heat either. I may be a pessimist but also typical thermal panel will incur most loss of the absorbed energy as plain radiation, including significant loss from the ductwork or whatever. The implication is that for exterior panel, you either have vacuum insulated thermal collector-conduits, or net gain is negative. I believe this is the standard of knowledge today, and it might be mentioned. Further, in questions, while you correctly do discuss the effect of angle of incidence on the intensity (density) of the radiative flux per unit area, you fail to make note that further up you go, the shorter the day becomes during winter. And so, this may mean there simply is no way to use solar thermal panels in winter. So good prez, spawned some ideas.

enjoyed the earthships!

Very nice and unique💖

awesome presentation

200 million year old petrified wood🤣🤣🤣. The nonsense!!

Seems to work, looking for ideas.

regarding the solar septic question. She is right that bacteria break down the sewage (solids) just like any septic tank. If you can increase the heat on the tank through free solar the bacteria break down the solids much faster making it more efficient. The tank is divided in half, eventually the water waste is separated to the second half which they call black water and it piped away underground to water outside botanical cells of plants and trees.

Good stuff!!

Fantastic explanation. This just emphasizes the need to open everything up, and reinsulate everything. Question: what are your thoughts on utilizing corrugated plastic for any part of a build, from an insulation aspect; ie windows. The corrugation has air pockets, thus creating a thermal barrier.

The materials... have become "astronomical" due to "c-vid"... but we are not stopping our "endeavor"...

Great job

Good idea 👍. Thnx for sharing

In a new house today you have off gasses like crazy from all the new paint/lacquer finishes , floors/carpeting/cabinet finishes, Heating and air, vinyl blinds ,everything in a new house today has very toxic voc gases bleeding off and each year it gets less and less because they air out.Just buy yourself a new car and that new car smell that we all love is all off toxic voc gasses but after a while that new car smell goes away. MOST PEOPLE PARK THAT NEW CAR IN THE GARAGE INSIDE THAT BRAND NEW HOME WITH THE NEW TIRES AND EVERYTHING. THAT MY FRIEND IS SO SO SO TOXIC.I think a earth ship is mostly natural building materials.I don't think the tires are going to put off gases because they are not new and they are encased inside the wall!!!. they have aired/dried out for a good 30,000 miles. They are very old at least "5 to 10 years" i would not use brand new tires hahaha . just think its built mostly from natural building materials. They don't even use paint on floors and walls. I'm sure that if you built yourself a brand new home today and parked your cars in your new attached garage that you would have a really good chance of getting cancer...Think about it!! I think Michael Renolds has the right idea and with that you will always have the naysayers trying put a bad spin on things...

I keep thinking that a little jack hammer with a flat custom flat round attachment would make short work of tire pounding... Just a Idea to make things go fast;)

"No petroleum in the house" Is vinyl siding "in the house" because it covers half the residential properties in my city? There is much more exposure to people day to day from that, or asphalt shingles (and roads and driveways and the tires on your car etc….) than tires buried in dirt and concrete (or adobe). I agree that petroleum products are not the best choice for building materials or the contents of our homes, but you're not being honest with yourself if you think there is more exposure in a typical earthship than in a typical suburban home.

"Huge Refrigerator" - No it's not. It's a DC fridge that has much more insulation than a standard residential refrigerator, so the total volume looks large, but the interior storage space is much smaller than you probably expect. I'm sure that with the small market for this style of appliance they are expensive, but the cost is also for performance, and security (they run off the batteries directly, so even if the inverter breaks, you still have refrigeration).

Granted I have 27 or so years in engineering, construction management, and general contractor business owner…..but, her presentation was shallow in explanation. She didnt seem to grasp the understanding of the structure and its systems. Ive only been studying these homes for all of 4 days and observed a lack of knowledge from her. She did a great job of preparing slides, but it seems that she spent most of her time prepping slides. There were many questions and points that were brought up and she was unable to explain or answer.

What machine were you using ? model etc

There is some information missing from this report. There actually have been scientific studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and others that have shown that most off-gassing of tires happens when they are newer and when they are exposed to UV radiation. According to these studies, when the tires are past their useful life and buried in a berm in addition to being plastered over, they do not off-gas into the home. I would worry more about the people building these homes, pounding tires in the hot sun. Michael Reynolds himself was diagnosed with brain cancer in December 2019 and given less than 6 months to live, but he is fighting and still living. Whether this condition was caused by his years of building these structures or another reason is unknown. There have been no other claims of cancer caused from actually living in an Earthship to my knowledge. As your student mentioned, many of the complaints that cost Reynolds his architectural license were trivial issues about temperature control and other modern conveniences. Just as many on the left today proport to be environmentalists while driving around their Lexus and Mercedes SUVs, and living in their 5,000+ square foot homes, some of his clients had high ideals, but then when the reality of living off-grid hit them, they didn't like it because it took a little work, thinking, planning, and was not the cushy lifestyle they were accustomed to. For instance, the homes are designed to work with solar and sometimes the addition of wind power. They do not have air conditioning but are designed to stay between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of these people did not like that they couldn't turn their dial to 65, or whatever their preferred temperature, and they had to work by opening vents and windows to go with the natural processes to regulate their home temperature. When people choose to live off-grid, they really should do their homework and realize it is not going to be like living in the lap of luxury that they are used to. You have to think about how much solar energy you have and how many appliances you can run at once. In a desert environment, you have to be cognizant about not taking long, indulgent showers when you know what you annual rainfall is. These houses are remarkable in that they collect all the water for the residents without paying for water services, and they use the water a minimum of four times for each ounce of water! Before passing glib judgement, I feel one should stay in one of these homes at least overnight to see what it is really like. Many of these homes outside of Taos are now very popular Air B & B destinations. I don't know the extent or depth of research required for this project, but I was shocked that your student did not appear to have read or sourced any of the books written by Michael Reynolds. I know much of today's research is done online, but I hardly think six websites and a movie are enough sources to do credit to Reynolds and his revolutionary design and architectural principles. Also, she did not go into much depth about the various people using these design principles around the world (she mentioned a few). People are able to make these homes sustainable in places as diverse as the deserts of New Mexico to colder climates, such as Colorado, and even Canada. Most people do the builds themselves with help from friends, and there are even several communities surrounding this design principle that have sprung up in places where building regulations are less stringent, such as Crestone, Colorado. The Off Grid Guru makes many You Tube videos about these types of structures being built in many different places, including the first to be built within a city in the US in Philadelphia. I believe this is an idea that was ahead of its time, and as resources and building materials become more scarce and expensive, and waste products become so much more plentiful, it is a way of sustainable living that we should all be considering more thoroughly. There also is a lot of information on You Tube and other places on the internet that explain how people are making further innovations on Reynolds' design principles. I think I would prefer the method some people are using of taking huge tire bricks that have already been compacted by a waste disposal company. They provide even more thermal mass and a way to dispose of even more tires in a useful way when building a house. The exposure to the tires by construction crews prior to their burial and covering is minimal in this application. Thank you for putting this online for more people to discover after Michael has been trying to spread his ideas for the past 50 years. When he first started developing these concepts, the idea of recycling was not even a thing yet. Your student did a great job overall of explaining the overarching concepts and ideas behind Earthships and how they have been embraced more fully in third-world countries where they do not have the money and luxuries (and stringent building codes) that we have in America. There also are many industries and companies that do not like Michael's radical ideas because they could potentially do away with the need for utility companies. I, for one, will be very happy when that day is a reality!

They still use cans, but they cover the outside of the cans with adobe, concrete, or other substances. The cans are just used as filler to reduce the amount of concrete or other construction materials.

University professor did the study on tires and his research paper is available from eb. They passed his law and gave him 2acres for testing. Can and bottle walls are only used for infill and nonloadbearing. You don't see the cans because like the tires they get plastered over. Diagrams of the wom añd pom are available on the earthship app in the app store

Hello sir I am an engineering student I need some help regarding this topic , could you send me the PDF copy of this file. It would be really helpful for me and I'd honestly appreciate it Thank you

"Let's burn some shit." Eric Hurley 2020